7.8
Italian-cinema icon Marcello Mastroianni starred in more than a hundred films over the course of his astonishing, half-century career, though he will perhaps always be best remembered for the six masterpieces he made with Federico Fellini, who cast the actor as his on-screen alter ego in international sensations like LA DOLCE VITA and 8½. In this sprawling documentary directed by Mastroianni’s longtime partner Anna Maria Tatò, the actor tells the story of his life with philosophical humility and sly wit, offering candid insight into the man behind the dashing image.
8
SOMETHING LIKE A WAR is a chilling examination of India’s family-planning program from the point of view of the women who are its primary targets. It traces the history of the family-planning program and exposes the cynicism, corruption, and brutality of its implementation. As the women themselves discuss their status, sexuality, fertility control, and health, it is clear that their perceptions are in conflict with those of the program.
7.1
Agnès Varda’s lifelong interest in still portraiture informs this record of a provocative Munich exhibition by the artist Ydessa Hendeles that contemplates our need for nostalgia and comfort in a violent world through an assemblage of hundreds of antique photographs of people and their teddy bears.
6.5
Gu Jun's film for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad Beijing 2008 strikes an adroit balance between the intimate and the spectacular. Gu starts by flitting between various places around the world where individual athletes are training and captures director Zhang Yimou (RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO) discussing logistics with his team and imparting his vision for the Opening Ceremony. Gu has what appears to be total access to the competitors, inside and outside the stadia.
6.7
A rare glimpse into the mind of one of cinema’s most enigmatic visionaries, DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE offers an absorbing portrait of the artist, as well as an intimate encounter with the man himself. From his secluded home and painting studio in the Hollywood Hills, a candid Lynch conjures people and places from his past, from his boyhood to his experiences at art school to the beginnings of his filmmaking career—in stories that unfold like scenes from his movies. This remarkable documentary by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm travels back to Lynch’s early years as a painter and director drawn to the phantasmagoric, while also illuminating his enduring commitment to what he calls “the art life”: “You drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that’s it.”
In this contemplation on the meanings of movement in the experience of migration, the grace and skill of a Filipina domestic worker are juxtaposed with devotional dances to the Santo Niño statue that Magellan brought to the islands in 1521. The ensuing galleon trade of silk and porcelain for New World silver initiated the global economy, and the cycle in which female care labor is now the commodity in demand.
7.9
UMBRELLAS takes a poignant, in-depth look at the concept and realization of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s project “Umbrellas.” The film presents the artists at their most triumphant and most vulnerable moments—from the exaltation of the project’s opening day through unexpected tragedies at the end.
7.1
With the freedom and rigor that were his trademarks, Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira returned to Porto, the city where he had been born ninety-three years before, for this sublimely evocative documentary collage. The Porto of this childhood is a city laden with history, a city of artists and thinkers. As in a spiral, the film moves from the ruins of the house where the filmmaker was born to the streets of the city that, in 1896, saw the birth of cinema in Portugal. PORTO OF MY CHILDHOOD takes the form of a search: fragments of memories, footprints, testimonies, song lyrics, and photographs are all portals to a distant past that echoes into the present.
7.3
Far from a standard music documentary, Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen’s loving portrait of underground musician Benjamin Smoke—speed freak, drag queen, and a true outsider artist in every sense of the word—captures his singular personality (described by Cohen as a kind of “Deep South, dirt-poor Oscar Wilde”), mesmerizing performances, and the unique world of his Cabbagetown neighborhood in Atlanta. Filmed in evocative black and white, BENJAMIN SMOKE is a poignant tribute to a life lived totally and uncompromisingly on the margins.
7.1
Agnès Varda’s charming follow-up to her acclaimed documentary THE GLEANERS AND I is a deceptively unassuming grace note that takes us deeper into the world of those who find purpose and beauty in the refuse of society. Revisiting many of the original film’s subjects to explore the often unexpected effects that their participation in the project has had on their lives, this wonderfully warm and human epilogue once again takes gleaning as the starting point from which to explore what most interests Varda: the richness, complexity, and poignancy of life outside the mainstream. What emerges is a crazy-quilt tapestry of the personal, the political, and the esoteric that celebrates the spirit and creativity of those who forge their own path.
8.1
In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary FOR ALL MANKIND is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Forty years after the first moon landing, it remains the most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about this earthshaking event.
8.1
A tremendous, handmade monument to lives lost to AIDS, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt demonstrated that grief and activism together could forge a powerful symbol of resilience. Winner of the Academy Award for best documentary feature, this moving film—buoyed by an original all-vocal score by Bobby McFerrin—explores the human stories obscured by statistics, examining the cross section of identities affected by HIV/AIDS, as well as efforts to combat the stigma, misinformation, and political obstruction that deepened the crisis.
7.2
This portrait of Cuba’s storied Isla de la Juventud (then known as Isla de Pinos)—the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and the site of Fidel Castro’s imprisonment by Batista—examines its rich history and culture.
7.4
This witty, charming, and unusual documentary chronicles one of the most enduring rivalries in nature: man versus rat in their endless struggle to control New York City. The war is fought on every front—in sewer and subway, tenement and skyscraper alike. RAT captures the real-life horror and humor as Gotham meets the invading vermin. Marvel at the resilience of these rodents, while hearty New Yorkers share tales of battle and, in some cases, defeat. The cameras go on patrol with the city’s famed exterminators, then behind walls, through pipes, and deep into the New York underground to reveal the hidden world of these most cunning of creatures.
7.3
In this powerful and poetic documentary, the legacy of the Vietnam War is explored from a perspective rarely acknowledged: that of the survivors whose lives continue to be impacted by the loss of their loved ones. Twenty years after her husband was killed in Vietnam, director Barbara Sonneborn embarks on a journey overseas to the countryside where her husband died. Her odyssey is interwoven with the testimonies of both Vietnamese and American war widows whose words reveal the devastating impact of a war that, decades after its end, still exacts a devastating human toll.
8
Krzysztof Kieślowski made more than twenty documentaries, including the following short. In TALKING HEADS, Kieślowski poses the questions “What year were you born?” “Who are you?” and “What do you most wish for?” to forty different people, ranging from an infant to a one-hundred-year-old woman.
8.1
Made with a righteous political anger that anticipates the incendiary polemics of documentarians such as Michael Moore and Joshua Oppenheimer, Kazuo Hara’s most renowned film is a harrowing confrontation with one of Japanese history’s darkest chapters: the atrocities committed by the country’s military during World War II. Hara’s unforgettable subject and collaborator in THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON is Kenzo Okuzaki—a former soldier, convicted murderer, and defiantly anti-establishment agitator—who has made it his life’s mission to expose the crimes committed by Japanese officers against their own men while stationed in New Guinea. As the often-violent Okuzaki resorts to extreme measures in his crusade to find out the truth about what happened to two soldiers murdered by their commanders, what emerges is at once a shocking piece of investigative journalism, a courageous condemnation of militarism and blind obedience, and a riveting portrait of a single-minded man driven by a raw fury bordering on madness.
7.1
While most know chicken as a dinner-plate staple, few pause to consider this bird’s many virtues. In this fascinating and gently comic documentary, director Mark Lewis delves into the under-recognized complexities of this seemingly simple animal. Through interviews with those who have formed unique bonds with chickens and narrative vignettes depicting the birds at their magical best, Lewis allows us to rethink our relationship to a creature we have previously taken for granted, while at the same time providing a lens through which we can view ourselves anew.
7.3
This eighty-minute documentary was made by Toby Keeler in 1997. In addition to footage from the set of LOST HIGHWAY, it includes interviews with David Lynch, Patricia Arquette, Angelo Badalamenti, Robert Blake, Mel Brooks, Catherine Coulson, Peter Deming, Jack Fisk, Balthazar Getty, Barry Gifford, Austin Lynch, Jennifer Lynch, Jack Nance, Dean Stockwell, and Mary Sweeney.
7.9
Among the most important documentaries ever made, The Thin Blue Line, by Errol Morris, erases the border between art and activism. A work of meticulous journalism and gripping drama, it recounts the disturbing tale of Randall Dale Adams, a drifter who was charged with the murder of a Dallas police officer and sent to death row, despite evidence that he did not commit the crime. Incorporating stylized reenactments, penetrating interviews, and haunting original music by Philip Glass, Morris uses cinema to build a case forensically while effortlessly entertaining his viewers. The Thin Blue Line effected real-world change, proving film's power beyond the shadow of a doubt.
6.3
Go behind the scenes with the ’80s rock hitmakers as they head to the Bahamas to film a music video for their number one single “Stuck with You.”
5.6
Caroline Rowland's FIRST is influenced by Bud Greenspan's method of profiling selected competitors in depth and continuing with an account of how they performed at the Games, often in their own words. Rowland's twist is that she chooses all first-time Olympians.
7.6
A lost-and-found revelation from indie film and TV maverick Jan Oxenberg is a docu-fantasy narrative focused on the filmmaker’s hilarious, messy, Jewish family as they prepare to say goodbye to someone they love. Narrated by a cardboard cutout of Oxenberg’s scowling child self, THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT takes us on a journey through the proceedings, attempting to defeat death and never say goodbye. An early Sundance hit but virtually unseen for decades, the film reemerges as a singular, uncategorizable exploration of the meaning of life, death, and the tangled stuff that is a family. In this poignant, hilarious, and complex reflection on letting go, Oxenberg innovatively transforms personal tragedy into universally resonant art that is now claiming its rightful place as a classic of independent cinema.
